THE CLASSIC #14

Do you like the cover? The portrait of Gwili Andre is included in Cecil Beaton’s Fashionable World, currently on show at the National Portrait Gallery, London. During my conversation with curator Robin Muir, we discussed the hard work Beaton put into reinventing himself and Muir told me, “He was performing Cecil Beaton for most of his life.”

There’s another performer in this issue, Curzio Malaparte, who changed his name from Kurt Erich Suckert and wrote two devastating accounts of WWII, Kaputt and The Skin. Laura Leonelli met up with Michele Bonuomo to discuss Malaparte, (whom even many admirers of his books will describe as a scoundrel) and how he discovered the late author’s photographs.

As I have written previously, our magazine grew out of the community for classic photography and I see it very much as a collaboration with that community. The so-called little fairs are an important part of it, that is, tabletop fairs that are focused on the history of photography. And there’s growing activity on that front. In addition to fairs in Paris and London, in recent years, several new fairs have started up, in Amsterdam, Vienna and Senigallia on Italy’s Adriatic coast.

I felt it would make sense to start an organisation to promote the fairs and classic photography in general and in August this year, Vintage Photo Fairs Europe was born. You can read more about it in the In Brief section.

Finally, and as always, I’m grateful to Jasmine Durand and Mike Derez for their outstanding work.